Quotes from David Bohm

William James who advocated a plurality of approaches that are dynamically related. In place of the monolithic unity of the paradigm, which is able to change only by being cracked and shattered in a revolution, would stand a form of unity in plurality.

Most of the material environment in which we live — houses, cities, factories, farms, highways, and so on — can be described as the somatic result of the meaning that material objects have had for human beings over the ages. Going on from there, even relationships with nature and with the cosmos flow out of what they mean to us. These meanings fundamentally affect our actions toward nature, and thus indirectly, the action of nature back on us is affected.

The important point is that the intention is a kind of implicate order; the intention unfolds from the whole meaning. It doesn't just come out of nothing. Therefore a person cannot form intentions except on the basis of what the situation means to him, and if he misses the mark on what it means, he will form the wrong intentions.

The notion of a thing is thus seen to be an abstraction, in which it is conceptually separated from its infinite background and substructure. Actually, however, a thing does not and could not exist apart from the context from which it has thus been conceptually abstracted. And therefore the world is not made by putting together the various "things" in it, but, rather, these things are only approximately what we find on analysis in certain contexts and under suitable conditions. To

If we all had to do a job together, we would likely find that each one of us would have different opinions and assumptions, and thus we would find it hard to do the job. The temperature could go way up.

It is a most important characteristic of the mechanistic philosophy, however, that it permits one to make a limitless number of adjustments in his detailed point of view, without giving up what is essential to the mechanistic position.

Even in science to raise fundamental questions can be very disturbing. Somebody could feel, 'I'd like to have the answer to this right away, and get out of this unpleasant state of disturbance', and he would never get anywhere.

man's first realization that he was not identical with nature was also a crucial step, because it made possible a kind of autonomy in his thinking, which allowed him to go beyond the immediately given limits of nature, first in his imagination and ultimately in his practical work.

if people are to cooperate (i.e., literally to "work together") they have to be able to create something in common, something that takes shape in their mutual discussions and actions, rather than something that is conveyed from one person who acts as an authority to the others, who act as passive instruments of this authority.

The undivided wholeness of modes of observation, instrumentation and theoretical understanding indicated above implies the need to consider a new order of fact, i.e., the fact about the way in which modes of theoretical understanding and of observation and instrumentation are related to each other.

By using the term 'thinking substance' in such sharp contrast to 'extended substance' [Descartes] was clearly implying that the various distinct forms appearing in thought do not have their existence in such an order of extension and separation (i.e., some kind of space), but rather in a different order, in which extension and separations have no fundamental significance.

If one computes the amount of energy that would be in one cubic centimeter of space, with this shortest possible wavelength, it turns out to be very far beyond the total energy of all the matter known in the universe.

a proper world view, appropriate for its time, is generally one of the basic factors that is essential for harmony in the individual and in society as a whole.

What is essential here is that the act of creative perception in the form of a metaphor is basically similar in all these fields, in that it involves an extremely perceptive state of intense passion and high energy that dissolves the excessively rigidly held assumptions in the tacit infrastructure of commonly accepted knowledge.

Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those of others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture.